


The Little Things

by evil_bunny_king



Series: Fic Exchanges <3 [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Crestwood undead shenanigans, DAficswap, F/M, Malfinneth Lavellan, Post fade-kiss, Snark, UST, that curious period of in-between
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 07:59:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4255575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/evil_bunny_king
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Are you well?” His voice was barely audible over the burr of his magic, energy buzzing as he brought a simulacrum of his fist into the supports of the stable to send the archers tumbling to the ground.</p><p>Malfinneth picked off the survivors before responding. “Well enough. If they were smarter they’d actually use the gatehouse, instead of scrabbling around on their own porch.”</p><p>“Ah yes.” He paused for breath and turned his head to look at her properly, tired amusement visible in the soft ambience cast by his staff. “Perhaps we should be grateful that their lack of foresight has enabled us so.”</p><p>She grinned between arrows. “<i>Perhaps</i>.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Little Things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [writinwaters (Anithene)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anithene/gifts).



Malfinneth preferred the bandits.

She sighted down the length of the arrow, bow string drawn taught and quivering by her cheek. Breath, release - the wood sighed, the arrow burying itself neatly into the hollow of her targets eye. The bandit dropped, screaming, an easy target for one of Dorian’s corpses – a child that scratched beneath his fallen guard with peeling hands – and she turned to the next mark, new arrow in hand.

Fighting like this, it was familiar: action greeted with reaction, the dialogue between prey and stalker. A hunter's rhythm, and one that she knew well.

Another release, another scream. Cut short, this time, by a cascade of stone tumbling from a fade rift. Solas. She allowed herself a quick smile. The bottleneck was holding – Cassandra bellowing a challenge from where she braced herself astride the gatehouse’s entrance, Solas and Dorian’s wards fending off long range attacks and sowing lightning and chaos amongst their ranks. The bandits were many, but they were ill-prepared, malnourished. They fared little chance, and from the desperation in their expressions as they threw themselves against Cassandra, they knew it.

They’d made their choice. They’d die by it.

The splinters of the castle’s original door rolled under her boots as she slipped to a better vantage point. Stepping over a still-warm dead Mabari, she picked off the archers that clambered onto the stable roofs ahead. Solas shifted to accommodate her, the swinging of his staff restrained in the small space.

“Are you well?” His voice was barely audible over the burr of his magic, the energy buzzing as he gathered it around his raised hand. There was a crack from the stables as he brought a simulacrum of his fist into the supports of the structure, sending her targets toppling to the ground.

She finished off the ones who survived the collapse before responding, shrugging a shoulder.

“Well enough. If they were smarter they’d actually use the gatehouse, instead of scrabbling around on their own porch.”

“Ah yes.” He paused for breath and turned his head to look at her properly, tired amusement visible in the soft ambience cast by his staff. “Perhaps we should be grateful that their lack of foresight has enabled us so.”

“ _Perhaps_ , yes.”

A rattled groan behind them caught their attention, and they turned to see a new corpse was staggering towards their unguarded back, still slick with river mud. Malfinneth cursed, raising her bow to hobble it (arrows to the knee caps) and it sank to the ground without a sound, eye-less head still fixed unerringly in their direction.

It wouldn’t be Crestwood without the _corpses_. Their bodies dredged from the lake that bordered the fort and town, the spirits didn’t respond to pain, not like the living did. Either their dead hosts were too disintegrated to recognise the sensation, or the spirits just didn’t care, but either way they took a damned long time to die.

Solas turned back to the inner keep, flaring out his hands to renew Cassandra’s wards while Malfinneth stalked farther down the passage to scope the area outside, keeping a close eye on the twitching body.

“Are they approaching already?” His frown was evident in his tone. “I had hoped we’d have more time.”

She squinted into the rain. The sodden swathes of once fertile fields rolled out to the feet of the nearby cliffs and wind-churned lake - deceptively peaceful, for the moment, at least.

“Not yet.” Her earlier smile had slipped into a scowl. “But if they’re anything like the fuckers in the Fallow Mire they’ll be swarming over us in minutes.”

As if to prove her point, the crippled corpse reannounced its presence with a groan, dragging itself across the stone towards her – it had been married, once, she could see the shem’s gold marital band straining its bloated skin. It was fresher than the ones from the bogs, and its long, stringy flaxen hair was still recognisable, tangled and knotted as it was around rotting shoulders.

She took a swift step towards it to drive her heel into its exposed skull. When it still managed to moan she did it again, and again, foot sliding on the loose skin until the skull caved with a satisfying crunch, rendering it unrecognisable once more.

She definitely preferred the bandits.

There was a muffled snort from her right as Dorian eyed her from his position by the opposite wall, turned away from the quietening courtyard. The battle was coming to an end.

“That is one way to deal with it, I suppose.” He cast a final glance around them, furtively peeking out towards the lake behind Malfinneth before poking the corpse’s shoulder with the end of his staff. “Inelegant, granted, but certainly effective.”

She scraped her boot pointedly on the edge of a flagstone. “Better effective than gnawing at your ankles, Dorian.” Her smile was more teeth than anything else. “Imagine that mud in your coat-tails.”

He chuckled, but shook his head. “Sadly I fear it is already too late for that. Bloodstains and _ooze_ are such a bother to wash out.”

She let out a huff of laughter at that as Cassandra marched up towards them, shield shouldered, working her shoulder in its joint. She gave the now-still corpse only a momentary glance before gesturing a gauntleted hand forward, impatience clear.

“We should move on, and quickly. The keep will not seize itself, and we should secure it before more of the dead arrive.”

Dorian snorted again, but moved as prompted, settling his staff more comfortably in his grip as the group strode back into the rain. “Leave the glib comments to Varric, would you, Seeker? He’s so much better at it then you are.”

Cassandra threw him a deadpan look, although the tightness in her jaw belied her calm. “Varric is indeed better with words than I, mage. Next time you can have him barring the entrance while you blather along behind him. Maybe his _tales_ will stop the long sword from cutting out your throat.

Malfinneth allowed herself a smile. Cassandra had yet to forgive their rogue, it seemed.

Dorian raised his eyebrows, lifting his hand placatingly as they stepped cautiously across the courtyard. “Touche. I do believe I’ve hit a nerve. Awfully sorry. Grateful mage shutting up now.”

“Ha.”

Ignoring Cassandra, Dorian sauntered forward, compelling the small dead child to follow them with a small flourish. He placed a scavenged dagger in its hand as he passed, renewing the enchantments with a pulse of magic and a few muttered words in Tevene, a press to the crown of its head. The corpse staggered after them as they advanced through the courtyard, lax jaw clicking closed occasionally as it tripped over its sole remaining shoe.

Malfinneth averted her eyes away from it. Like the other corpse, the child’s eyes had long since rotted away, straggles of its hair sticking to its closed eyelids in the rain. It could no longer _see_ \- and yet the head would turn unfalteringly after each flicker of movement, staring after it in a mimicry of childlike curiosity.

The magic was useful, yes - a distraction as well as an offensive tactic, and it was an advantage she’d be loath to lose, particularly in a close fight. Normally, though, Dorian’s spelled creatures were more _palatable_. Freshly fallen foes to turn on their comrades, or long abandoned skeletons cobbled back together on a shale beach, forgotten, empty.

A sudden scuffle of footsteps ahead – she fitted an arrow in her palm as a line of ill-armed warriors advanced down the stairs, fear and desperation stark on their faces. Mouth firming, she raised her bow, choosing her mark.

But as she released she couldn’t help but watch as the child staggered forward, dodging around the thrust of a pike to set itself upon the weapon’s wielder. Swarming over its victim before they had a chance to draw their sword, bearing them to the ground, a blind flurry of snapping teeth and spindly, wretched limbs.

Her arrow missed.

The hasty ambush unravelled around her, the air filling with the crackle of lightning and the clangs of crossing metal. She drew a breath and an another arrow and this time she lost herself to the tension of bow and string, the rhythm of choked screams and intaken breaths beating with her pulse in her ears.

Solas’ magic was a smooth silk against her skin, Cassandra a whirl of leather and armour before her, and in moments the defenders were scattered and faltering, retreating to the stairs. The few that remained were cut down as they scrambled up the steps, mercy giving way to lack of time.

Sight. Pause. Release.

They moved on.

 

\--     

 

Solas.

Three months ago his name would’ve evoked a scoff or at least a dismissive snort – _Solas? Of all the arrogant, insufferable piss heads the inquisition coughed up from the Thedasian backwaters–_ but now –

Memories paced the edge of her thoughts.

_The slope of a smile, gentler than expected and soft when pressed against her mouth. Fading, as his lips moved more surely against hers - teeth grazing teasingly over her lower lip, her inadvertent huff of breath swallowed, returned._

_His hands - smoothing a molten trail around her waist, dragging up the arch of her back._

_And his words._

**We shouldn’t. It isn’t right. Not even here.**

Her gaze slid towards him as they ascended the final climb.

Time, he’d said.

Malfinneth could be a patient woman.

 

\--

 

“Why the child, Dorian?”

They were sheltering within one of the battlement towers, recuperating as they patched themselves after the final skirmish. The keep had offered the most resistance but that, too, had been piecemeal at best. The leader, the most formidable of the group, had been taken down in minutes by a concerted barrage of fireballs.

Cassandra’s voice was curious, faint exhaustion wearing at the edges as she buffed one of her paldrons. The child stood out in the rain, heedless of the water that sheeted down upon it.

Dorian looked up from where he was binding a poultice to a wound in his shin (a lucky arrow) to give the child a small frown.

“It wasn’t intentional, if I’m honest.” He pulled at the bandages, fruitlessly trying to keep them from twisting as he tucked them around his leg. “I was actually aiming for one of the Mabari – horrible blighters, those; thought the bastards could use a taste of their own medicine. But the magic is like that, sometimes.” He shrugged. “The energy settles into its selected host and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Tying off the knot, he rested his arms on his bent knee, examining the corpse. “The magic doesn’t normally last this long, either. _Normally_ the energy just peters out in a few minutes and the whole thing collapses. Like a puppet, once all its strings are cut. But this one… Must have something to do with the thinness of the veil. This place _is_ somewhat of a graveyard.”

Cassandra gave a hum of assent, considering the child a moment more before returning to beating a particular dent out of her breastplate. Malfinneth likewise slipped off her upper armour, suppressing a wince and beginning to hunt down her wounds.

Crestwood was a common enough tale: a blight ravaged community overwhelmed by darkspawn forces, drowned by them as they’d sheltered in the town and the caves beneath it. Those who’d survived cobbled a living at the edge of the newly formed lake, trying to ignore the bodies that occasionally bubbled up from the deep.

Their attempts to close the underwater rift _was_ a detour – but a necessary one. The remaining villagers wouldn’t last much longer under the assault, and with Grey Wardens in the area hunting their contact, stalling could only be strategic. Their true purpose would be masked as ‘humanitarian efforts’, to use one of Josephine’s favoured terms. The dead would be returned to their rest.

Gritting her teeth, she massaged a salve into a deep cut on her forearm, reaching for the bandages with her free hand. Her fingers scrambled distractedly over the miscellaneous objects that cluttered her kit, each flex inciting a new itch of pain, before a gentle touch to the back of her hand stopped her. She glanced up.

Solas offered her the roll, his expression smoothed, unreadable aside from the companionable smile on his lips. Nonetheless his eyes caught hers for a lengthening second as he pressed the bandages into her palm - before he drew gaze and touch away, returning to his gear. Shuttering himself back off after the slightest slip, control locking firmly back into place.

She allowed herself to kick up an eyebrow as she swiftly unrolled the wad, bemusedly beginning to wrap them awkwardly around the wound. The other brow only joined it as the action triggered the magic that had been spelled into the weave, a subtle chill that tingled as it sank into her skin and eased the throb of the surrounding swelling.

The dead were not the only ones who should be allowed their peace.

“A spirit, even a fragment of one, would still embody the expressions that led to their creation, Dorian. It’s unsurprising that they would appear to show ‘preferences’.” Solas’ voice carried easily across the small space, and although he did not look up she could imagine the touch of irony that would be tucked in the upturned corners of his mouth.  “It is likely that they are drawn to whichever host presents the most interest to them, and an inhabitant of old Crestwood would certainly make an… appealing choice, in such a case. As unfortunate as that may be.”

Malfinneth moved on to her vambrace, running her fingers along the seam, hunting the damage that she knew split the hardened leather. A pause- she could hear his thoughtful hum, envision the conceding tilt of his head.

“But you are correct in that it is probably the weakness of the veil that enables its continued existence.”

“I’m right?” Dorian didn’t bother to hide the mocking incredulity in his voice. “Nugs must be flying. Is it Tuesday today?” He laughed, picking at a tear in his robes before releasing it to cast about for his things. “Nonetheless. You really do take us to the most ghastly places, Inquisitor.”

She didn’t bother looking up, having located the damage. A short sword that managed to rake its way past her before she’d been able to slip out of the way – a brief encounter, but a successful one nonetheless. She would be more careful next time.

“It’s my pleasure, Dorian. Obviously I like to ensure that the Inquisition only establishes camps at the edges of plague-ravaged shanty towns.” She drew her armour mending kit closer to her, reaching carefully around her bandaged forearm. “Corpses are an integral feature.”

He laughed again, indulging her, as he dragged his pack towards him, at length unearthing a sewing kit. Silence returned as they each engrossed themselves in their respective tasks, comfortable and weary, accompanied only by the thrum of the rain.

The child waited placidly in the centre of the courtyard. Rivulets of rainwater ran down its ruined face, pooling in the caverns of its collarbones.

 

\--

 

The musty air of the abandoned tavern caught like mothballs in her throat, the thick layers of mould and damp muffling their footsteps as they approached the lit hall ahead. Weapons ready at their sides, clenched in white knuckled grips – each had marked the strange hush that seemed to await them, tension winding tighter between them with each step.

Anticipation pulled Malfinneth's chest tight as she neared the threshold first, hugging the shadows of the narrow corridor. The pouch of sleeping powders weighted her right hand, the dagger hilt heavy in her left – freshly sharpened, poised.

She darted softly around the corner, guard raising –

And barked a laugh at the sight of the entwined lovers before her.

The others followed her shout, bewildered - before Dorian chuckled, Solas sighed, and Cassandra gave an unimpressed snort at the sputtering humans that scrambled frantically for their clothing, tangled together as they were on the fur they could only have brought with them.

“In- Inquisitor! Ser! We, we didn’t know you were here, ser. Please - don’t tell anyone!”

The boy’s pleas only served to send Dorian into further titters, a fit accentuated by the yelps the youths gave when they noticed the small corpse watching them by the fireplace, blankly observing the scene.

“How did you get past the guards?” The amusement was clear in her voice as well, incredulity painting her features. A shift of movement from Solas to her left – he gave a discrete cough, hand raising to cover his mouth, but not quick enough to hide the smile that stole across his lips.

“There- weren’t any, Your Worship, not when we got here.” The girl spoke this time, chemise hanging low on her shoulders. She hugged her sheep’s wool blanket closer to her chest, widened eyes flicking between the child and Malfinneth. “We snuck here by the shepherd trails to avoid the bandits – we’d heard you were here, ser, but we didn’t realise you were coming _here_ , I swear it.”

Funny, that they should fear the child. They were the ones who’d chosen the graves of their families and neighbours for their lovers’ reunion. She gave them a sceptical look.

“This place is hardly romantic.”

Cassandra gave a snort at that and the youths fidgeted, Dorian laughing a short “she’s got you there”; the girl once again tried to find her voice, pulling the blanket higher. “It’s not – it’s just, my family, they’d kill him if they knew ser, we really didn’t know you’d come here, ser – please don’t tell-”

Solas’ smile had fully slipped from his control now, twisting the corners of his mouth as he otherwise viewed the proceedings with a play of disinterest. But she noticed when his eyes flicked to her. Felt their caress as they roved down her profile (a lick of heat), lingering on the arch of her ear, the bow of her lips. And when she caught his gaze with a cock of a brow, this time he didn’t look away – considering her under lowering lashes, irises darkened to ash in the flicker of the hearth.

Her pulse picked up in response, a flush creeping up her neck, and she broke the contact, turning back to the panicked humans who so tentatively awaited her judgement, steeling her expression into a suitably stern mask.

Time, he’d said.

Her patience was waning.

 

\--

 

The ease with which they located the door to the dam controls was almost laughable, in the end. And when the four of them (she purposefully omitted the child) had arranged themselves before its peeling surface, the door had proven just as easy to open, rust cracking around the turning hinges.

Cassandra raised the torch she’d relieved from the lovers as one after the other they piled into the small space, scanning walls and floor for the reported blight. Corruption: a decade old and potentially as deadly as when it had first spread, festered in the darkness, preserved by isolation and decay.

They were met, instead, by yet more dust and abandoned casks. Barrels were stacked against the walls, caked shut from long disuse and a spoked mechanism protruded from the floor, wooden arms and metal cogs, dominating the room.

It was, auspiciously, intact.

Malfinneth considered it in surprise, raising a hand to trail a finger through the dirt that dusted the aged wood as she hovered near the doorway. But it was Cassandra who spoke first.

“This… must be the device.” The Seeker frowned down at the wood, hefting her shield more firmly onto her back as she stepped closer to brace her hands experimentally against the nearest spoke. “It looks well enough.” A push – the axle began to swivel, slowly but surely, and her frown deepened. “Perhaps it is missing pieces elsewhere?”

“There’s only one sure way to find out,” Dorian murmured, but he looked equally troubled, elbow cradled in his hand in that mannerism of his.

Malfinneth shrugged off her bow and quiver to take up a position on the other side of the wheel, sinking into a preparatory crouch without a word. Her skin itched when the child took up the spoke before her, the matted back of its head only just taller than the wheel, but she ignored it, exchanging a nod with Cassandra and after a breath beginning to push.

This was what they had come for, after all. She was not one to mourn an anti-climax.

The mechanism began to turn with a groan, stiff at first, and then more easily as they progressed, the shudder of its movement vibrating through her hands. The spokes sank further into the ground with each rotation, their steps kicking up clods of the dirt underfoot - she crunched over a mouse skeleton hidden in the wheel’s shadow at one point, and managed a short laugh at the way they’d all jumped, tensed as they were in the dim flicker of the torch.

They pushed until a growing rumble was undeniable beneath them.

She stopped in her tracks. Had the mechanism malfunctioned? Had they fractured the tavern's foundations somehow? The dam was a rusted collection of pulleys and cogs and other shem inventions, long given over to time – if it collapsed they'd be spilled into the lake, dragged down with the wreckage to join the rest of the old town. Not that it really mattered. Even if they ran now, they wouldn't be able to clear the tavern in time.

But the rumbling continued, assuredly but controlledly, and soon she recognised it for what it was.

The dull thunder of rushing water, spat out onto a dried riverbed. The moan of a stagnant lake stirring back to life at long last.

The dam was working, undamaged after all.

She winced as the spoke behind her suddenly pressed into her back - the child had kept pushing, unphased by the trembling underfoot - and she removed herself from the mechanism; gazed again around the room. The uncorrupted surroundings. The steady, efficient creak of the spinning axle. And suddenly it made sense.

The villagers of Crestwood had drowned their blighted kin.

It was an evil, if such morality could be said to exist. The lengths desperate men would go to preserve what little they had left, at the cost of their homes, their livelihoods, their flesh and their blood. She knew that as she stood there, as she listened to the roar and the voices it carried: a thousand souls who'd choked in darkness and their own shortening echoes, far from the sun and the blue arch of the sky.

But necessity demanded its pound of flesh.

She looked around the innocuous, dusted room, its wheel still turning - and she _understood_.

Her gaze fell upon Solas.

He was watching her. Pupils blown wide, a sorrow harbouring there. A recognition, one that widened as his eyes met hers - and his tightly wrapped shell cracked that little bit more, splintering into pieces that she’d painstakingly gather later, warm and alone in the shelter of her tent.

Old pain, regret, they etched into the hollows of his cheeks, the grim tug of his mouth.

But it was the edge in his eyes that caught her.

Acceptance. Acknowledgement. Understanding of the villagers' crimes, the necessity of their expedience- the same dark knowledge that stirred within her. And he recognised it in her, as well. The widening of his eyes betrayed it - the consideration that crept across his expression, the slight wonder in his gaze.

That familiarity, it wound itself like vines through the lattice of her ribs. Burrowed itself deep into the heat of her lungs.

Dorian motioned the child away and the axle’s creaking finally came to a halt. The mage's expression was unreadable, his fingers fidgeting uncharacteristically, buckling and unbuckling the cuffs of his armour.

A quiet returned to the room, save for the roar of the water and the shuffle of the child as it returned to Dorian’s side.

“Release it.”

Cassandra was staring at the mechanism, fists clenched at her sides. She was evidently fighting to keep her expression clear, but threads of anguish still managed to tug at her thinned lips, a burning anger settling between her brows.

Dorian looked at her a moment before he complied, settling his staff more firmly in his grip.

A few words of Tevene. The shudder of magic.

And the child crumpled, empty before its carcass could hit the floor.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [DAficswap](http://daficswap.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, a great initiative if you have an account and are interested. I was paired with the amazing writinwaters and their OC Malfinneth - it's been an absolute pleasure!
> 
> Alternate title ideas: Zombie Boy Blues, or Sweet Child of Mine. And I've been editing it again - so now with a new and improved awesome ending. ;D
> 
> Thesis is done, so I now have time to write. YAY.


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